Warlock 9.2 Tier Set Bonuses - Guide Writer First Impressions

PTR Posted 2021/11/29 at 2:51 PM by Jaydaa

Tier Set bonusesPTR realms being unavailable

We've datamined Tier Set bonuses for all 36 specializations in the 9.2 Eternity's End PTR. Check out all the bonuses and armor models below.

9.2 Tier Set Bonuses for All Specializations9.2 Mythic Tier Set Models

Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the 9.2 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.

First Impressions of the 9.2 Tier Set Bonuses

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Priest Tier Set First Impressions
Rogue Tier Set First Impressions
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Warlock Tier Set First Impressions
Warrior Tier Set First Impressions

First Impressions of the 9.2 Set BonusesAffliction Warlock Writer First Impressions

2-Set - Deliberate Malice - Malefic Rapture's damage is increased by 15% and each cast extends the duration of Corruption, Agony, and Unstable Affliction by 2 sec.

4-Set - Calamitous Crescendo - While Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction are active, your Drain Soul has a 4% chance / Shadow Bolt has a 20% chance to make your next Malefic Rapture cost no Soul Shards and cast instantly.

The 9.2 tier set bonus for Affliction Warlock looks extremely promising at a first glance. I'm not too surprised to see it revolving around Malefic Rapture, considering it's the main nuke of the specialization, even though it's still significantly nerfed since its Castle Nathria days. Realistically, this set bonus won't change how Affliction plays in any significant way - on both multitarget, as well as single target, you'll still follow the same priority list of abilities. You'll just want to cast Malefic Rapture whenever Calamitous Crescendo procs in order to not lose procs.

Not sure right off the bat how strong Affliction will be with the set bonus - initial impressions are pretty good, but I'm still of the opinion that affliction will struggle on single target. Maybe Affliction's tendency to scale well throughout the expansion will shine through, but we wont have a great idea of that until we see initial PTR testing.

What intigues me the most about this set bonus is that they're very synergistic - Calamitous Crescendo gives free Malefic Rapture whenever you're casting your filler spell, whether it's Drain Soul or Shadow Bolt, and Deliberate Malice lets you cast those filler spells more often by extending your DoTs, meaning you have to recast DoTs less often. Deliberate Malice has pretty insane implications for multidotting scenarios; on 2 targets, you gain 10 seconds of free DoT extending every time you cast Malefic Rapture. Pretty wild.
Demonology Warlock Writer First Impressions

2-Set - Ripped From the Portal - Call Dreadstalkers has a 100% chance to summon an additional Dreadstalker.

4-Set - Malicious Imp-Pact - Your Hand of Gul'dan has a 5% chance per Soul Shard to summon a Malicious Imp. When slain, Malicious Imp grants a Soul Shard and will either deal (19% of Spell power) Fire damage to all nearby enemies of your Implosion or deal it to your current target.

The current implementation of both tier bonuses look to have Demonology overflowing with Soul Shards like crazy. The 4-set directly gives us a Soul Shard on every proc and the 2-set gives us an extra stack of Demonic Core when the Dreadstalkers fade. Currently, we will have a large excess of Demonic Cores and Soul Shards, so it will be very tough to not overcap on either of these resources. Thankfully this doesn't really change the playstyle of Demonology outside of you feeling rushed to use all the resources available to you. There is some synergy within the tier bonus and our talents with Dreadlash, From the Shadows and the conduit Carnivorous Stalkers, where you get extra AoE from Dreadlash and extra proc chances out of Carnivorous Stalkers and thus From the Shadows.

In terms of relative strength, both bonuses are quite good in all situations as Malicious Imp-Pact gives you damage in both single target and AoE situations and you don't have to choose. There is still some speculation on if the Malicious Imp will act as a Guardian like our current Imps do, therefore contributing to Demonic Consumption or if it won't count towards this. Some initial findings show that the abilities that the Imp cast are Shadowflame damage instead of Fire damage as the set bonus tooltip indicates, so there could be some additional interaction with From the Shadows there as well which would have additional influence on talents.

The biggest gripe about both of these set bonuses is that they both potentially contribute additional value to Demonic Consumption, which pushes it even further ahead of the other options in the level 50 talent tier despite Nether Portal being buffed. Overall, these set bonuses are interesting and provide enough change(s) to the spec that majority of players should be happy. There is a lot to find out still about the 4-set and how it all interacts, which will determine quite a lot of things about its strength. Things are looking pretty good however, and you should expect to wear out your Demonbolt key a little more with the tier equipped.
Destruction Warlock Writer First Impressions

2-Set - Ritual of Ruin - Casting Rain of Fire or Chaos Bolt has a 20% chance to make the next cast of the other free.

4-Set - Avatar of Destruction - When Rain of Fire or Chaos Bolt is freely cast, you summon an Infernal for 8 sec.

The 2-set bonus Ritual of Ruin gives you a 20% chance when casting Chaos Bolt or Rain of Fire to make the next cast of the other one free. The 4-set bonus then makes that freely cast Chaos Bolt or Rain of Fire summon an Infernal for 8 seconds. This is an interesting couple of bonuses and they play very well together. It's still very early to determine the exact strength of this bonus, as there is some speculation as to if the Infernal summoned from the 4-set will allow you to proc Rain of Chaos as well. My first impression of this bonus is that it's very interesting and adds a bit more diversity to what you cast. This is going to factor into all types of content, but will for obvious reasons be significantly stronger on cleave and AoE as Rain of Fire and Infernals damage scale with multiple targets.

From the looks of it, this is going to be a strong bonus that is also going to make the spec a lot more fast-paced and fun to play. In the end, how strong the bonuses will be is going to come down to the uptime on the Infernal, the proc chance, and whether or not there is going to be an internal cooldown to the proc. As long as this doesn't get nerfed from the originally published numbers, I think it's going to be an interesting bonus to play with and it's going to make Destruction Warlock more fun to play.

Comment by MawsinLooking like an exciting set for destroComment by Servasus"Call Dreadstalkers has a 100% chance to summon an additional Dreadstalker."

"100% chance"

Why even word it in this way? The amount of Dreadstalkers summoned with the Dreadstalker ability was never random anyway, and if it's a 100% "chance," then why not just say, "Call Dreadstalkers summons 1 additional Dreadstalker"?

I dunno. WoW team has been annoying me with the last few expansion's tooltips. I feel like right around Legion they started outsourcing whoever their team is who writes tooltips and the quality has gone down. Not just because of instances like this, but also because of the general amount of grammar mistakes, misspellings and wording inconsistencies throughout the game. Not to mention at the start of BFA they decided they were going to make more than half of the tooltips in the game super vague. Like most of the Azerite traits would tell you something had a chance to proc off the use of an ability, but wouldn't tell you what the percent chance was. In previous expansions, things like this would be transparently written IN the tooltip. Maybe no one but me cares, but it annoys me. Tooltips give flavor and info to the player, and doing a poor or lazy job on them really shows, imo.

And yes, blah blah it's only ptr blah blah. Things like this don't usually change before patches or expansions launch. It's just been this way for like 5 years now.Comment by greeneggso stack haste and get that permanent infernal is what I'm seeing.

assuming there's no internal cooldown for a moment, I wonder if proccing the 4 set will summon an additional infernal if you already have one up or just extend the duration of one that is up.Comment by LykaiosUuuuf, man. As warlock main, all bonus set are great, gonna be working in all situation. I wait Blizzard don't detect fun in this and make changes for the others spec bonus set that really needComment by SouledkWhy even word it in this way? The amount of Dreadstalkers summoned with the Dreadstalker ability was never random anyway, and if it's a 100% "chance," then why not just say, "Call Dreadstalkers summons 1 additional Dreadstalker"?Comment by MortalitosHow petty can you be?Comment by wallrochaWarlock always has the best stuff from all ranged dps/casters having fluid stuff that always compliment each other so much that I wish their class design worked for every other one. Meanwhile Shadow Priest dev that left Blizzard thinking he did a good job before he did so...Comment by aleyzanthe art of being mad at absolutely nothingComment by LichizI know we can't know a lot right now, but this analysis is pretty lackluster when compared to the other class writers...Comment by RahzalSounds pretty goodComment by Rahzalyikes, first world problems eh"Call Dreadstalkers has a 100% chance to summon an additional Dreadstalker."

"100% chance"

Why even word it in this way? The amount of Dreadstalkers summoned with the Dreadstalker ability was never random anyway, and if it's a 100% "chance," then why not just say, "Call Dreadstalkers summons 1 additional Dreadstalker"?

I dunno. WoW team has been annoying me with the last few expansion's tooltips. I feel like right around Legion they started outsourcing whoever their team is who writes tooltips and the quality has gone down. Not just because of instances like this, but also because of the general amount of grammar mistakes, misspellings and wording inconsistencies throughout the game. Not to mention at the start of BFA they decided they were going to make more than half of the tooltips in the game super vague. Like most of the Azerite traits would tell you something had a chance to proc off the use of an ability, but wouldn't tell you what the percent chance was. In previous expansions, things like this would be transparently written IN the tooltip. Maybe no one but me cares, but it annoys me. Tooltips give flavor and info to the player, and doing a poor or lazy job on them really shows, imo.

And yes, blah blah it's only ptr blah blah. Things like this don't usually change before patches or expansions launch. It's just been this way for like 5 years now.Comment by MorpHzzI know we can't know a lot right now, but this analysis is pretty lackluster when compared to the other class writers...Comment by TshadowwI thinkthe dot extension in the 4-set affliction will only benefit us in st situation where we will be playing malefic wrath leg as we'll have more time to drain but besides that i dont that dots extention is that impactfull in terms of power, its more of a comfort life change.In Aoe we're using seed of corruption which makes our vorruption technically infinite so we just have to refresh agony thats already have almost 30 sec uptime so as i said its makes it easier to maintain dots but we can already do that with a minimum of skill.Comment by SatyrosDefinitely wouldn't call this an "analysis". These folks did not run any sims or provide any meaningful insights.Comment by PolishBunnyAs soon as ptr is up there we can test it. So no matter what class writers had to say, we can see for ourselves \o/Comment by BeraninDefinitely wouldn't call this an "analysis". These folks did not run any sims or provide any meaningful insights.Comment by BeraninI thinkthe dot extension in the 4-set affliction will only benefit us in st situation where we will be playing malefic wrath leg as we'll have more time to drain but besides that i dont that dots extention is that impactfull in terms of power, its more of a comfort life change.In Aoe we're using seed of corruption which makes our vorruption technically infinite so we just have to refresh agony thats already have almost 30 sec uptime so as i said its makes it easier to maintain dots but we can already do that with a minimum of skill.Comment by SnugglepuzzThe destro set makes it sound interesting but really that seems to be quite fight specific, how often in an AoE fight are you looking to cast chaos bolt without a havoc window, and how often in a single target fight are you looking at RoF? I get the extra infernal but guess its just going to be like the random proc ones when you spend shards now.
Its going to end up being a 'click on flashing icon' situation in your rotation, would have preferred something more like havoc now can duplicate spells on a single target (like it used to) and havoc now affects all enemies within 5 yards of the target for 5 seconds (though i'd really like to abuse a chaos bolt spam for this kind of window its got to be fairer)Comment by Azmuldan"Call Dreadstalkers has a 100% chance to summon an additional Dreadstalker."

"100% chance"

Why even word it in this way? The amount of Dreadstalkers summoned with the Dreadstalker ability was never random anyway, and if it's a 100% "chance," then why not just say, "Call Dreadstalkers summons 1 additional Dreadstalker"?

I dunno. WoW team has been annoying me with the last few expansion's tooltips. I feel like right around Legion they started outsourcing whoever their team is who writes tooltips and the quality has gone down. Not just because of instances like this, but also because of the general amount of grammar mistakes, misspellings and wording inconsistencies throughout the game. Not to mention at the start of BFA they decided they were going to make more than half of the tooltips in the game super vague. Like most of the Azerite traits would tell you something had a chance to proc off the use of an ability, but wouldn't tell you what the percent chance was. In previous expansions, things like this would be transparently written IN the tooltip. Maybe no one but me cares, but it annoys me. Tooltips give flavor and info to the player, and doing a poor or lazy job on them really shows, imo.

And yes, blah blah it's only ptr blah blah. Things like this don't usually change before patches or expansions launch. It's just been this way for like 5 years now.Comment by Frostyouso stack haste and get that permanent infernal is what I'm seeing.

assuming there's no internal cooldown for a moment, I wonder if proccing the 4 set will summon an additional infernal if you already have one up or just extend the duration of one that is up.